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SIG drops First State for MIR to run Greater China Equity Fund

By: Jonathan Boyd | 06 Mar 2012

Skandia Investment Group has switched management of its $363m Skandia Greater China Equity Fund to MIR Investment Management from First State Investments.

The change comes despite the fund being 1st quartile in its sector since launch, delivering returns of 132.5% between 5 December 2005 to the end of February 2012. During that period the benchmark MSCI AC Golden Dragon index returned 67.8%.

“First State has been an excellent investment partner, but we are in agreement that further asset growth could be a future constraint in sustaining performance, said James Millard, CIO for SIG.

“First State have always taken a very prudent approach to capacity management and have closed many of their strategies to new investors; SIG is supportive of this stance to protect their ability to deliver returns for clients. As such the time is right to change the manager of this fund.”

“Our team are always proactively looking to identify the next generation of managers. Much as we did with First State in 2005, we believe that MIR in turn will make a great success as manager of the Skandia Greater China Equity Fund. This change also allows retail investors to access outstanding, but less well known, investment talent in the region.”

“MIR is in our opinion an extremely high quality equity manager with teams based in Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and China. They apply a quantitative and qualitative approach to construct portfolios with strong value and momentum characteristics while remaining diversified. The foundations of their strategy are built on compelling academic research and strong empirical evidence for the efficacy of value and momentum in Greater China equities. We believe they are the right sub-advisor to take on the Skandia Greater China Equity Fund into the future.”